Budget Beach House

See how a young couple transformed a condemned beach shack into their dream home, for about $1 per square foot.

Getting to Work

The first order of business was to erect poles to hold the roof up and to position five car jacks under the house to keep it from collapsing. "I wish we could have demoed a lot, but we couldn't afford to," Joe says.

Instead, he removed mold- and fire-damaged walls and stripped off the exterior wood siding, which he later recycled as beams, baseboards, and door casings.